003: Failure and The Way To Success

Last week I spoke about the Art of Repurposing and a new perspective from the Icarus Myth I learned from one of my favorite authors: Seth Godin.

During that episode I said:

If we want to succeed, we may fail many times.

Now, I want to correct myself:

If we want to succeed, we must fail many times.

We must build a strong failure resilience if we want success.

It took me a long time to internalize this maximum, and I have to admit it’s not always comfortable to follow.

Two resources that help me build my failure resilience are:

ONE-

An interview with Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx and self-made billionaire, where she tells how her father used to ask every night at the dinning room table:
“Okay kids, what did you fail at today?”

This is a 3-minute video that is really worth your time.
Blakely’s story is an amazing example of how to reframe failure.

The author Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz create a compelling story to show us how our image of a fork in the road where one option is failure and the other option is success, is a misleading one. A better and more realistic visualization is to see failures are the stepping stones to success.

2 comments

Love this Ana! It can definitely be more difficult to take risks and to start something new when you come from a family of success oriented people that ask you “what did you achieve today?” instead of “what did you fail at today?”. You feel pressure to win, even from the beginning. I’m going to go read “Go For No” this weekend.